


Riddles in the Dark

by mushigo_palm_spores



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:41:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mushigo_palm_spores/pseuds/mushigo_palm_spores
Summary: “And we wept precious. We wept to be so alone. And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My precious.”Lotr au - in which the cyberium reduces the Master into a gollum-esque creature.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to the wonderful androktasia for beta-ing

  
  


The Doctor awoke to complete blackness. 

Water had seeped into her clothes and into her hair where it surrounded her throbbing head in a cold pool. Her body had not quite finished healing the damage from the fall and so she had to remain prone, shivering in the wet dirt whilst the last broken bones reconnected themselves. One broken wrist, one fractured ankle, several broken ribs and one dislocated arm, her body told her. She was also thirsty, taunted by the steady drip of water running off the sides of the cavern, every so often, a droplet hitting her face. 

Finally she could grope her way into sitting position, sharp little stones biting into her palms as she did.The sudden movement startled some creature., which quickly scuttled away with the pitter patter of little feet She reached into her pocket for her battered sonic, which briefly illuminated a cavernous tunnel before it gave up the ghost, plunging her back into the eternal gloom.

Blindly, the Doctor groped around, fingers scrabbling for the wall. It was wet and slimy, and she felt the small vibrations of the scraping insects that inhabited it. Choosing a direction at random, the Doctor began to hobble forward, clinging to the wall, her only guide.

In the dark, deprived of sight, her eyes began to hallucinate, tricking her into seeing the dots and flashes of the light she now craved so intensely. And she could not stop thinking about water. Water, cool, bottled, running from the tap, cold streams, clean and fresh, waves, splashes, dripping. 

Unable to bear it, she greedily pressed her mouth against the filthy damp wall. It tasted of mud and mould and iron. 

Suddenly, a deep rumble reverberated through the tunnel. When recalling the incident later, the Doctor could not have told if it was real or a hallucination, but at the time it had filled her with complete and absolute horror. She broke into a run, stumbling and falling in her urgency, trapped between her need to flee and her inability to see the floor. Her flight came to an abrupt end when her foot suddenly sank into a puddle of mud. She slipped and fell. 

Silence. The air stank.

Later she discovered that she’d lost a shoe, her toenails cracked and the sole of her foot bruised and bloody, but she ignored all that – for now the mud was far more interesting. If she pressed down on it with splayed hands, a shallow pool of water seeped up through her fingers! Thirstily the Doctor lapped it up, but it was so foul, a taste like rotting meat, that she immediately retched it back up again. She collapsed against the rock, exhausted, throat in agony. Her body was no longer capable of producing tears, but a thick salty sludge had steadily been forming at the corners of each of her eyes. She’d now been stumbling around in these caves for 8 hours. 

Once again, in sinking dismay and despair, she took in the extent of the loneliness and emptiness around her. By now, her hearing had magnified so that she could hear the scraping of every insect, the pattering of any rat or mouse, so loud it was deafening. But there was also something in the distance….was she making it up? If she strained her ears she could just hear… water? 

It was so far away. 

It could not be real. 

A lake? 

A stream?

The Doctor heaved herself up again. A frenzy had gripped her. The promise of a drink was too much to bear. Her feet were not moving fast enough. She felt like she was in a dream where no matter how fast she tried torun, she was just stuck in the same spot. Every step lasted an agonising lifetime, her impatience with her own body becoming a tension that pressed against her skin, desperate to escape. 

She punched the wall beside her, impatient and frustrated. Her exhaustion had not left her, but she pushed it aside for now, a rush of adrenalin flooding her blood.

The air became fouler and fouler and splinters began to litter the ground, pushing themselves into the Doctor’s exposed feet as she walked, cutting and bruising them so that she was limping, then crawling. She could feel infections seeping into her wounds, little microorganisms wriggling into the exposed and broken flesh. 

The smell was becoming unbearable, but all the while the sound of the stream was getting clearer and clearer. 

The Doctor cared for nothing more than the water.

Eventually her fingers found an icy cold stream. She instantly began lapping it up. Frantically, desperately, only stopping when she had to gasp for breath. 

Panting, she collapsed against the wall. In her frenzy she had covered herself in icy water which, in the freezing cave, chilled her to the very bone. She shivered and curled herself up into a tight ball. 

Exhausted, she fell into a fitful sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

A hand caressed the Doctor’s cheek. It was wet and slippery and stank and was followed by a trail of drool that languidly dripped down onto her face from above. She instantly shot up, pushing the creature away and pressing her back against the wall. She was blind. She could not see anything. She could not hear anything. It was only herself and the dark. 

Then the hand brushed against her knee. 

The Doctor cried out, pressing herself further against the wall. “Who’s there?” she called. 

A pair of silver eyes materialised out of the dark. It was the first light the Doctor had seen since eternity and she averted her eyes, clenching them shut. But suddenly the entire cave was flooded with their light. It stabbed through her eyelids and pressed against her skull. For a moment all she could do was to quail against the wall, clenching her eyes shut, then blinking painfully as they adjusted to the merciless new glare.

Finally, she could see. Light reflected off the walls, off the spring that ran into a pool a little further on, off the torn open carcasses that littered the entire floor. 

Bile rose into the Doctor’s throat. The splinters she had been falling and stumbling over for hours on end now revealed themselves as bones and skulls. The mud was saturated with blood. In the centre of it all crouched a scrawny little creature, its fingers covered in entrails. 

The Doctor turned away and vomited into the ground in front of her. 

The figure grinned. It’s teeth were white and sharp and seemed to glow like its eyes. A grizzled beard hung from its sagging cheeks, its face skull-like and almost bald. Filthy rags hung from its frame, wet and discoloured. The creature was covered in blood, some fresh, some dry and flaking. Its grin widened and it sat back on its haunches, to reveal a pair of torn, muddy purple socks.

The Doctor leaned forward. No…...it couldn’t be. She’d recognise those socks anywhere.  _ Surely not…. _

“My preeecious,” the Master crooned. Silver liquid began to run out his eyes, down his bony cheeks. It dribbled down his thin gangly neck, snaking under his ragged torn clothes, then out from under his sleeve into his now outstretched and gore soaked palm. He reached up with his other hand to tenderly caress it. “My love.” 

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

“Get up precious, get up.” The Master was tugging impatiently at her sleeve. The Doctor groaned, waking to blackness. Only the Master’s eyes and teeth were visible. He pressed something cold and slippery into her hands. Another dead fish. The Doctor bit into it, scales coating her mouth and gums like sand. The Master watched on in approval and, as soon as she was finished, took hold of the uneaten fish head and bit into it with a sickening crunch, then another and it was gone. Then he turned and scampered back off into the dark. 

They were on a little stone island with a steep plateau to one side which the Doctor had been using for shelter. She was not quite sure how the Master had transplanted her here, only feverish memories: Lying sick on the cave floor, hallucinating as the Master tended to her and fed her, being shaken awake roughly and urgently one day, the Master desperate and frightened. “Orcses are coming precious, we must go, we must go,” he had cried. Being led through the dark to a pool, lying curled up in a little boat, turning first too hot then too cold as the Master noiselessly paddled them across the water, making not a single ripple. “We knows a safe space precious, a safe space, yes,” he had whispered, “ _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM. _ ” The last was a wet horrible coughing noise, followed by flecks of silver spittle, that accompanied the Master wherever he went.

On that stone island he had nursed her back to health, sometimes offering up little trinkets and gifts such as dead rats or eyeballs. 

Now she could hear his  _ “GOLLUM, GOLLUM” _ echoing around the cave as he went about his daily business. Often he talked to himself when he was hunting, hissing across the water in a low voice, in a language the Doctor could not understand. Sometimes he even hummed to himself tunelessly. She herself spent most of the day sleeping, her body fighting off the last dregs of the fever.

At night the Master would return, offering her another dead fish. He had tried feeding her orc meat, but she had instantly retched it back up again. Then she would go back to sleep and he would remain crouched where he was, sometimes contemplating her, sometimes the precious. 

It was the fact that the Master had not been hungry when he found her that had saved her life. Had he been hungry he would have strangled her in her sleep and eaten her there and then. But instead she had piqued his curiosity: something that was neither human nor orcses. Her presence had rung a long muted bell...a vague memory of red grass and children’s laughter……. At that moment she had, rather harshly, reminded him how lonely he was.

He had once before tried to keep a human as a pet down here, having found it stumbling around alone in the dark. He had fed it and looked after it in the hope that it would keep him company but it had soon died. He hoped that this new attempt would prove itself more successful. 

The precious was all against it. “Nasty timelords, tricksy and false,” it had muttered through his lips. “Kill it. Kill it before it escapes,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM. _ ”

“But we likes the timelord, precious,” he had complained, “We promises not to let it escape.”

“More than you like me, my precious, my love?”

“Oh no precious we loves you. We loves you more than anything  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM _ .”

“Then kill the timelord.”

But he had not killed it.

  
  


Finally the Doctor recovered her strength enough to assess her situation with more awareness and clarity.


	4. Chapter 4

“Sing us a song, precious.” The Master was in a good mood today: he had found a dead rat. It had been almost completely fresh.

“What would you like me to sing?” They almost always spoke gallifreyan to each other.

“Sing us…..” the Master frowned for a second, then lit up into a grin “.....sing us a lullaby.” 

It had been a long time since the Doctor had sung a lullaby. She searched for a while in her memories, before reaching out and selecting one half buried, safely kept in a little corner of her mind. In the first few weeks at the Academy, Koschei had struggled to sleep, daunted by the strangers in the dormitory, the loneliness and the dark. He had always come to her and she had cradled him in her arms till he went to sleep, singing a lullaby that they had composed together in secret.

She only remembered chunks of it now, random strands of lyrics. The gaps she filled by humming. It was a beautiful song about quantum harmonics. About the two of them exploring the universe together on a black hole star. Sometimes bits of lyric would come back to her as she sang and she had to stop and re-sing the verse before carrying on.

The Master, squatting beside her, hesitated. Then, with a sudden and heavy movement he laid his head on her shoulder. The Doctor had grown accustomed to his smell, especially having developed some pretty interesting odors herself by now. But with his head on her shoulder and the last greasy hanks of hair he had left right in her face, holy crap he stank. Nevertheless she put her arm around his waist, just as she had back then in the Academy. The Master coughed to himself, a slightly gentler  _ “gollum, gollum.” _ and let out a contented sigh.

“Koschei-”

The cyberium did not like it that she’d called him that one bit. It tried to fight away the memory and rebury it but he glimpsed it nonetheless.  _ Koschei. That was our name, yes. _

“I’ve been thinking. Do you know the way out of here?”

The Master withdrew and sat back up again. “It……..wants...to leave us?”

_ I told you it was tricksy, I told you it was false _ , the cyberium gloated.

“We thoughts it would stay…..and be our friend.  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM. _ ”

“Please Koschei. I need to go.”

“No,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM, _ precious stays.” The Master emphasised the words by placing a possessive hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Precious stays and becomes Koschei’s friend. Or else Koschei kills it.”

  
  


*******

  
  


That night, the Master got into his little boat and paddled silently into the center of the lake. He liked the water, still and stagnant, not a single ripple. He liked gazing into his own reflection, the two silver eyes that swirled and danced with the power of the precious. It was so bright, so beautiful. And it was his.

“Poor Koschei,” the cyberium simpered through his lips. “Now the time lord wants to go away. Abandon us. Leave us all alone in the dark. Poor, poor Koschei…”

“No. Precious won’t abandon Koschei.”

“Oh yes she will.  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM _ .”

The cyberium paused a moment before carrying on.

“Kill her. Kill her now.”

The Master gazed down into those two silver disks. In the dark, they seemed to grow larger and larger, rising up from under the water as if to swallow him whole.

“ _ KILL HER NOW! _ ”

Silently the Master paddled back to the little island. Like a cat he slipped out of the boat, sneaking up to the Doctor’s prone form. She had curled herself up in the tattered remains of her coat, shivering ever so slightly. Pressed against her chest she held the battered remnants of her sonic screwdriver, like a child clinging to its teddy bear.

Silently the Master reached out, hands slowly moving toward her throat. It would be over in less than a minute…….then he stopped.

“ _ What? _ ” the cyberium snapped.

The Master grinned. “We don’t needs to kill it.”

“ _ WHAT? _ ”

“We makes a deal with it.” The master’s voice was now alight with suppressed excitement. “We makes a deal and then it will stay with us forever and ever,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM. _ ”

“And what deal will that be, my precious, my love?” the cyberium was now steaming with suppressed rage and impatience.

“We plays a game with it. A game of riddles, yes.  _ GOLLUM GOLLUM _ . And if it wins, we shows it the way out. And if we wins, it stays with us forever and ever,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM, GOLLUM. _ ”

“Then make sure you win precious, make sure you win….”

But the cyberium’s voice was thin and weak now, almost crushed beneath Koschei’s growing excitement. “ _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM, GOLLUM _ ” he sang to himself as he jumped up and down across the island. He was good at riddles, yes. Always had been. He would win the game and the precious would have to stay with him forever and he wouldn’t have to kill it, “ _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM, GOLLUM _ .”

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

That morning an enthusiastic Master dropped a dead rabbit on the Doctor’s lap. He’d gone all the way to the surface to catch it and was very proud! 

When the Doctor at first struggled with it, he showed her how to tear it in half with his bare hands. Then he made sure she had all the best parts, the entrails and such, before helping himself to the rest of the carcass. She seemed to enjoy it, licking the gore off her fingers after she was finished.

Then he sat back on his hunches and, grinning, proposed his deal:

“We have agreed to let precious go. But first, it must play a game with us. If it wins, we shows it the way out. But if we wins, it stays with us forever and ever,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM _ .”

“What game?”

The Master grinned excitedly. “A game of riddles.”

“And you promise to show me the way out if I win?”

The Master nodded avidly.

“Ok, deal.”

  
  


*********

“What has roots as nobody sees,

Is taller than trees,

Up, up, up it goes,

And yet it never grows.”

That one was straight forward enough. “Mountains,” the Doctor replied. “My turn.”

“Thirty white horses on a red hill,

First they champ,

Then they stamp,

Then they stand still.”

It was a rather old one and the Master knew it too. “Teeth precious,  _ GOLLUM GOLLUM. _ ” 

“This thing all things devours,

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers,

Gnaws iron, bites steel,

Grinds hard stones to meal,

Slays King, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down.”

Easy. What with them both being time lords. “Time.”

“A box without lid,

Nor lock,

Nor key,

Yet precious treasure inside is hid.”

This one had the Master thinking. “ _ A box without lid, nor lock, nor key…… _ ” he hissed to himself. The cyberium gave him an angry jab. However it could not produce the required memory to solve the riddle. Frustratedly he gave a long hissing sound. “ _ No lock, no key _ ….”

Then he looked up into the Doctor’s face. She was sitting in much the same position as she had when they were children, whenever they were doing something or playing together. Once they had both stolen eggs from the kitchens at the Academy, and hidden in a corner where they’d slurped out the contents. One of the eggs had broken and the Doctor had spilled it all over his lap…..

“ _ EGGSES _ .” The Master cried triumphantly.

He had now run out of human riddles and moved on to gallifreyan ones instead.

“Seven statues in a tomb,

Seven kings inside a room,

One laughs,

One smiles,

One swishes his hand,

The other four in death united they stand.”

It was a mathematical formula hidden inside a poem, Rassilon’s theorem of quantumsentience. It was a relatively well known riddle, but the calculations were difficult to follow through in your head without quantum equipment. However eventually the Doctor had the answer, giving the 5D vectors.

After that they both needed a quick break before continuing. The Doctor knew that she could not outcompete the Master with mathematical formulae, he had always been better at those than she. So she continued with human riddles, hoping that in his disdain for the human race, the Master had not heard them before.

“An eye in a blue face,

Saw an eye in a green face.

‘That eye is like this eye,’

Said the first eye,

‘But in a low place,

Not a high place.’”

This one had the Master flummoxed for a while: there were no flowers on gallifrey and the grass there was red, not green. For a moment he thought that perhaps this too was a mathematical formula but upon examining it, could find no place to begin. “ _ Low and High… _ .” he muttered to himself, “ _ Suns? Moons? _ ” 

This time it was a memory belonging to the cyberium that solved the riddle for him: The lone cyberman treading upon the earth for the first time. It had been summer. The air had been full of scents and sounds. But his cold metallic brain had had no use for those. The sun had hung above him, a golden disk in the blue sky, and beneath him, daisies had been pushing their way up into the lawn.

“Sun on the daisies it is,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM, _ ” the Master finally hissed triumphantly.

This time the Master did not choose a mathematical formula, but instead went for gallifreyan lore:

“Four rings in red,

Four rings in blue,

An eye, a jewel,

A book, a clue,

A hybrid, a child,

All time shall undo.”

Now it was the Doctor’s turn to be flummoxed.  _ Four rings in blue _ . That’ll be the astronomical symbol for the constellation of kasterborous.  _ The eye, the book and the jewel?  _ The religious symbolism of the Arcalian chapter. But as for the four rings in red…... _ what are the four rings in red?  _ The Doctor racked her mind until suddenly, in the deepest recesses of her memory, she remembered a documentary on premonian-delta astrology.  _ Of course! _ This was a reference to the great scientist Vired, who had discovered a mirror constellation on the other side of the universe.

“Vired’s discovery of the premonian mirror universe,” she finally replied. 

“Too late,” the Master replied, “I win.”

“Wait no, I gave you plenty of time with the daisies one.”

“Too late, I win, I win, you need to stay here for the rest of your life.”

“No, that’s not fair Koschei.”

Perhaps it was the fact that she called him by his real name that the Master had mercy on her. Certainly the cyberium was against it.

“Ok, I’ll give you another chance. But for that, I get to say two riddles now.”

“Deal.”

  
  


“Your brother, my lover,

Your sister, your husband,

Your tomb and your temple,

My doom and my redemption.’

‘Your books and your swords,

My armour and my reward,

United we stand on the eve of battle,

Your life, my death,

Your treasure my chattel.”

  
  


It was a gallifreyan nursery rhyme, one that could often be heard chanted on the schoolground. The aim of the game was to change one word, one word only, but to mask it with a telepathic perception filter and hide it from the opponent, who then had to guess the word. However the master cheated. He changed two words. 

The Doctor mulled over the words telepathically, looking for any chinks or inconsistencies in the Master’s telepathic barriers as she examined the lyrics from all angles. The Master had always been outstandingly superior to the Doctor telepathically and for a moment he hoped he had finally won.

“Tomb and chattel,” the Doctor however eventually said.

They continued like this for the rest of the evening, first going for more and more obscure riddles, then making up ones of their own. Well into midnight they were still in a stalemate when finally, exhausted, the Doctor flopped down on the cold hard stone. They both agreed to continue the competition tomorrow and the Master went out hunting. He hummed tunes from old gallifreyan nursery rhymes to himself as he paddled across the water and caught a big fat fish which he gave to the Doctor.

Then they both curled up on the rock to go to sleep, backs pressed against the little plateau.


	6. Chapter 6

That night, the cyberium was finally ready to abandon the Master. What it could not kill, it would have to take control of instead. Painstakingly, methodically, the cyberium prized itself free from his body, taking care not to wake the Master, who groaned in his sleep as the silvery goo oozed up from under his fingernails. Soundlessly it slithered across the wet floor, sticking out its silver tendrils, probing toward the timeless child. She began to mutter in her sleep, flailing around and sweating as the cyberium neared her prone form. Yet it was not ready to bond with her, not yet. The process of parting with the Master had exhausted it. So instead, the cyberium slithered down the Doctor’s coat and into her pocket, where it lay in wait for dawn.

  
  


******

  
  


_ What have I got in my pocket? _ The Doctor asked herself over and over. She’d been fiddling with the cold metal form in her pocket for the last hour. It was weightless, no molecular structure, no density. The Doctor wasn’t sure if it was even from this reality. And cold, so cold. Cold enough to freeze a human’s fingers to stone. “What have I got in my pocket?” She repeated out loud.

The Master stopped.  _ “What?” _

“What have I got in my pocket?”

“That’s not fair, precious! How should we know what’s in its nasty little pocketses? _GOLLUM, GOLLUM_.”

It took the Doctor a moment to realise that the Master had mistaken her absent minded question for another riddle.

“And why isn’t it fair? You cheated at least four times today.”

“Three times.”

“Three and a half.”

The Master resigned. “Very well, but it must give us three guesses, must it precious, _GOLLUM, GOLLUM_.”

“Guess away.”

“ _ HANDSES?” _

The Doctor quickly pulled her hands out of her pocket. “Nope.”

“Sonic screwdriver.” 

Fortunately the Doctor had stopped putting the battered sonic in her pockets since the malfunctioning thing had started messing with the quantum stitching at the hem of her jacket. She pulled it out of the little stone niche she’d been hiding it in to show the Master. “Nope.”

The Master hissed to himself frustratedly. He’d searched the Doctor’s coat when he’d first found her of course and her pockets had all been empty.  _ Nasty, tricksy, empty little pocketses. _ He thought of everything he liked to keep nearby: Fish bones, goblin’s teeth,wet shells, a bit of bat-wing, a sharp stone to sharpen his fangs on, and other nasty things.

“.. _...nothing? _ ” he hazarded. 

“Nope.” The Doctor sounded triumphant. “You promised to show me the way out.”

“we didss, didn’t we?” The Master sounded dejected. “Show the time lord out of here and leave poor Koschei alone in the dark.” His eyes welled up with tears and he pawed at the Doctor’s coat. “Precious mustn’t go. Please, we begss it, we beggs it. Please don’t leave poor Koschei.”

“I can’t Koschei. I’m sorry but I can’t. Come with me Master. You know it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

The Masters despair gave way to rage. “Nasty little time lord,  _ GOLLUM, GOLLUM. _ You betrayed us, precious.  _ YOU BETRAYED US. _ ”

With that he launched himself toward the Doctor’s throat, who caught him by the wrists and attempted to push him away from herself. Instead he aimed a wild kick at her, which sent them both toppeling backwards, the Doctor’s head slamming into the cold water of the shallow pool.. The Master lunged renewable at the Doctor’s throat, using one hand to stangle her and the other to press her face into the water. She bit at him wildly and frantically, kicking until he was forced to momentarily let go. Then she finally managed to dislodge his gangly form from herself and push him onto the stone floor. The Master hit it painfully and was left coughing up blood as the Doctor stood up, panting. Then she reached into her pocket. She had finally figured out what it was. A small silver ring. It shimmered and pulsed as she slowly drew it out, as substanceless as a flame and infinitely more beautiful.

“Myyyyyyy Precioussssss,” The Master hissed furiously as he launched himself at the Doctor one last time. He never even reached her. There was a loud bang, a flash of silver and the Master was sent sprawling.

A gateway opened behind the Doctor. It began to pull her in, bathing her in white and stars and silver. She reached out toward the Master one last time, offering him her hand. “Come with me Koschei. Come with me.”

  
  
  


Her voice echoed through the caves even long after she was gone.


End file.
